Misfits…So Far.

At the time of writing, four episodes of this have aired. The fifth is likely to be airing in about an hour of this posting. It’s likely to presume that it’s halfway through its run…so is the Skins-meets-No Heroes-meets-something else actually any good? Let’s have a butcher’s at the first four episodes which feature a group of young people during community service end up getting strange powers…

On the strength of the first four episodes…not really. It’s not that good. It’s not awful, and there’s some stuff that could work but generally it feels like half a show that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. E.g. it wants to be Skins in that it wants to have character-centric episodes yet be a mystery at the same time. It wants to be some adverse kind of British Heroes where there’s people with abilities that you probably won’t get in the world of Hiro Nakamura and Peter Petrelli. But there’s a weak ongoing story involving killing someone and hiding the bodies that really doesn’t go with the central idea of the show. Ish.

Kelly. The telepathic Chav.

There’s a mysterious storm that gives five (well four, the fifth doesn’t seem to have one) people mysterious powers. There’s a slut who has the power to make every man who touches her get into lust with her (groan). There’s a telepathic Chav (which sounds good on paper and still has potential but seems a bit iffy at the moment). A strange creepy stalkerish guy who can become video when no-one’s watching him and a hot prospect in athletics who got caught with cocaine once can jump a few seconds back in time at THE. CONVIENENT. MOMENT.  There’s also an annoying knob (Nathan) who doesn’t have a power but ends up being the funniest character who is trying to find his power.

The second episode goes into the Skins character-centric mode, but whilst Skins made this formula apparent and focused on its best character this doesn’t get it quite right. It’s funny and reveals a lot about the Knob Nathan but it doesn’t feel right. The third episode attempts to be an Alisha (slut) episode which ends up being overrun by the over-arching story of them killing their social worker. It’s uneven, it doesn’t like it knows how to pace itself and there’s one other thing…

The whole powers-concept seems quite lacking in other areas. They don’t seem to be that focused on the plot or used that much and when they are…they just seem secondary in places. The powers aren’t that useful anyway…it just feels like half an idea that hasn’t been figured out properly. The evidence of this is clearly shown in the fourth episode which has Curtis go back to when he was caught with the drugs and is a bit of a ‘flashback’ episode. Now it’s a normal functional character-accepting-powers episode, but it has the biggest plot-hole in that future Curtis should not have been able to go back in time. But hey, when the consequence is an ex-girlfriend is not an ex…you can see where the writers want to aim things.

The teaser for episode five looks like it’ll be interesting – but there does need to be an extra shot in the arm for this show. Seriously.